U.S. Program On Climate Is Flawed, Panel Finds

By ANDREW C. REVKIN

Published: September 14, 2007

An effort by the Bush administration to improve federal climate research has answered some questions but lacks a focus on impacts of changing conditions and informing those who would be most affected, a panel of experts has found.

The Climate Change Science Program, created in 2002 by President Bush to improve climate research across 13 government agencies, has also been hampered by governmental policies that have grounded earth-observing satellites and dismantled programs to monitor environmental conditions on earth, concluded the report, issued by the National Academies, the nation's pre-eminent scientific advisory group.

In a printed statement, Veerabhadran Ramanathan, the panel's chairman, said that the program's basic scientific efforts had constituted ''an important initiative that has broadened our knowledge of climate change.''

Among other things, the report noted, the effort has helped resolve disputes over whether the earth's atmosphere is warming significantly or not, allowing scientists to compare data and agree that warming is occurring.

But the report cited more problems than successes in the government's research program. Of the $1.7 billion spent by the program on climate research each year, only about $25 million to $30 million has gone to studies of how climate change will affect human affairs, for better or worse, the report said.

''Discovery science and understanding of the climate system are proceeding well, but use of that knowledge to support decision-making and to manage risks and opportunities of climate change is proceeding slowly,'' concluded the 15-member panel, made up of scientists from universities and two companies, BP and the chemical manufacturer DuPont.

John H. Marburger III, the White House science adviser, issued a statement yesterday thanking the science academies for the ''thoughtful review,'' and saying several issues highlighted in the report ''are already being addressed.''

The panel found that program delays had been common: Only two of the program's 21 planned overarching reports on specific climate issues have been published in final form; only three more are in the final draft stage. And not enough effort has gone to translating advances in climate science into information that is useful to local elected officials, farmers, water managers and others who may potentially be affected by climate shifts, whatever their cause, the panel found.

One problem, the panel noted, is a lack of communication between government researchers and officials, industries or communities that could be affected, Dr. Ramanathan said in a telephone interview.

''We don't know what they need, and they don't know what we can provide,'' he said, referring to the government's science effort.

The program was originally framed by Mr. Bush as a way to focus research on pressing issues and produce a broad suite of results in two to five years.

A major hindrance to progress, the panel's report said, is that the climate program's director and subordinates lack the authority to determine how money is spent.

The report also emphasized the risks posed by changes in government priorities that have shifted focus away from earth-observing satellites -- the panel cited a long list of orbiting probes that were being cut or delayed -- and ground-based monitoring projects like efforts to track snowpack and stream flows.

''The loss of existing and planned satellite sensors is perhaps the single greatest threat to the future success'' of climate research, the report said.